There are various systems which attempt to locate a missing person by remote activation of a signal from the user at a remote location. Other devices remotely monitor the wearer of a monitoring device, to ascertain vital medical signs. However, these monitoring devices, such as portable telemetry units or wristbands, are generally confined within an institutional structure, such as in a hospital. Therefore, these medical monitoring devices are not designed for remote use outdoors, such as in a remote environmental park. Furthermore, the devices are not designed to be worn by a child or an infirm person, to track the person at a remote location of vast parameters. Moreover, existing prior art devices do not function after the transmitting portion of the device is disabled or removed from the individual using the device to provide time-line data which enable a rescuer to ascertain the whereabouts the victim by simulating where the person might be located, even without the actual functioning of the device.
The statistics on child kidnaping in the United States are significant and their effect on the child's parents and relatives is emotionally devastating.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,598,272 to Cox discloses a child monitoring device comprising two portable units, each having a radio transceiver and an antenna. One of the units, is secured to the child's person and the other is carried by the parent. The child's unit transmits a reference signal and can receive a different locator signal and has an audible alarm speaker which can be actuated by the locator signal. The parent's unit receives the reference signal from the child's transmitter and, by threshold direction, sounds a beep when the child's location exceeds a pre-determined distance. A light signal in the parent's unit remains lit as an indication that the child's unit is transmitting and that the threshold conditions have not been met. When the beep in the parent's unit indicate wandering of the child, the parent, by pressing a button, can actuate transmission of the location signal, which is stronger than the reference signal, to sound a raucous alarm in the child's unit to indicate the whereabouts of the child. Clearly this device is applicable only to very special situations and is intended to operate in a limited geographical area.
Among other prior art patents include U.S. Pat. No. 5,218,344 of Ricketts for wrist mounted transponders for surveillance of persons, such as inmates. U.S. Pat. No. 4,086,916 of Freeman, U.S. Pat. No. 4,406,290 of Walbeoff-Wilson and U.S. Pat. No. 5,335,644 of Nagashima also describe wrist watch elements in hospital settings. U.S. Pat. No. 4,918,425 of Greenberg describes a location system with speech recognition enhancers for remotely activated individual locator systems. U.S. Pat. No. 4,908,629 of Apsell and U.S. Pat. No. 4,764,757 of DeMarco also describe individual locator systems with remote activators.
Moreover, accelerometers are used in package shipping, so that if a package with sensitive equipment is dropped or damaged, the accelerometer will send a one time fixed threshold radio signal when the package is damaged. However, accelerometers are not used continuously to take a specific sample of continuous data and are not used to then include the sample of data in a data packet for a short period of time, such as five or ten seconds, and then transmit the coherent data for analysis for a predetermined period of time, such as every fifteen minutes.
Therefore, the prior art patents do not describe a novel method for transmitting data to be collected and analyzed at a later time, wherein further, the data collected is periodically updated and overridden, so that only the most recent data is processed.
Furthermore, the prior art does not disclose a system which provides a "write-only file" which provides a time-line of coherent data, as opposed to summary data, which coherent data covers, a long term period, which can be analyzed to locate a person even if the wrist watch or belt pod is detached, inactivated or damaged.
In addition, the prior art does not infer modes of transportation activities of a user, such as on foot or in a vehicle, so that the whereabouts of a missing person, such as a hiker can be rapidly analyzed and determined.